Graphical Slowdown Mars Final Fantasy Tactics on iPhone

The iPhone version of Final Fantasy Tactics is just as dramatic as the original game.(Screengrab: Jason Schreier/Wired.com)

A single flaw makes the otherwise fantastic mobile version of Final Fantasy Tactics nearly unplayable.

Developer Square Enix released the iOS port of its classic strategy role-playing game last week for iPod Touch, iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4 (reviewed). Unfortunately, the mobile version of Final Fantasy Tactics Wired.com tested suffers from brief bouts of graphical slowdown that plague every action.

Every time one of your characters swings a sword, casts a spell or moves around the battlefield, the game hiccups and slows to a crawl for a second or two. It’s very jarring.

Final Fantasy Tactics, first released for PlayStation in 1998 and then remade for the PSP in 2007, is a complicated game. During battles, which typically take between 10 and 15 minutes, you’ll guide your heroes around grid-based terrain and use their skills to take out a variety of enemies.

A single battle might consist of several hundred turns. When each of those turns suddenly slows down due to graphical lag, playing the game on your phone becomes an ordeal.

This is a real shame, because Final Fantasy Tactics is an amazing game, the type of deep, entrancing experience that is sorely lacking on mobile platforms. In many other ways, this port shines; the new touchscreen controls are simple and easy to use, while an auto-save function ensures that you never lose progress when you get a call or turn off your phone. But the persistent lag is a killer.

At $16, Final Fantasy Tactics is more expensive than most iPhone games, but it also delivers more content. There are tens of thousands of unique ways to play Final Fantasy Tactics. It’s hard not to develop an addiction to fooling around with its elegant class system. You’ll spend at least 50 hours playing through the main story, a bittersweet, Shakespeare-inspired tale that raises some heavy questions about war, freedom and religion.

It’s the type of game that, if ported correctly, would be perfect for your phone.

Graphical slowdown is not unique to this version of Final Fantasy Tactics; similar problems dogged the PSP remake. However, Square Enix said on its Facebook page in June that it had fixed graphical slowdown for this version. It has not.

Some writers have reported that they did not experience lag while playing Final Fantasy Tactics on an iPhone 3GS. I played the game on a standard iPhone 4 with no modifications or hardware alterations. I have not had performance issues with any other games on this phone.

Other gamers have also reported experiencing the same graphical slowdown. Some have suggested that changing certain settings in the options menu could fix the lag, but none of those tweaks fixed the problem in our copy of the game.

Wired.com contacted Square Enix last week to see if it was planning a patch to fix the game’s graphical issues, but the developer did not respond by press time.